Archives

You Know Fruits Are Good For You, But Why? How?


https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/64/2a/90/642a90794d405a7ab73c1dda3ca57a93.jpg

Posted by Tristina Howard – Eat your fruit! This is one of those lifestyle changes that I made. On any given day I consume 6 to 10 pieces of fruit. There are some that will eat 30 bananas a day. That may not be for me right now. In fact I haven’t ever thought that was “healthy”. To me a moderation of food intake is the best policy. #Weightloss #Weightlosstips #Fruit

Are you trying to lose weight? Now you can have your fruit and your weight loss too. Most fruit contains excessive amount of natural sugars that quickly converts into fat when eaten in excess. There are some fruits that actually work to help burn fat. Adding more of these fruits to your diet can help with fat loss. While fruit has many natural healing compounds, sometimes its sugar content can be a problem for people interested in losing weight. However, some fruits actually help you to burn fat. Here are my picks for the Top 5 Fat-Burning Fruits:

Avocado: Loaded with healthy Omega 9 fatty acids (the same fats found in olive oil, olives, and macadamia nuts), avocados speed the conversion of fat into energy and boost the rate of metabolism.

Coconut: Coconut is rich with medium chain triglycerides (MCFAs) which increase the liver’s rate of metabolism by up to 30 percent, according to some experts. They also help keep you full so you’re less likely to snack on junk food. Coconut oil frequently aids the functioning of the thyroid gland. Coconut oil, coconut milk (not the low fat variety), coconut flour, and shredded (unsweetened) coconut all contain MCFAs.

This Advertisement supports the blog

Lemons: Excellent liver detoxifiers, lemons also alkalize our body. They may seem acidic based on taste but in the process of being metabolized by the body, they actually alkalize our bodily fluids and tissues. Maintaining the health of the liver is also imperative to the body’s ability to digest and burn fat, since the liver is one of the organs responsible for these functions.

Grapefruit: Many studies confirm that grapefruit is an excellent weight loss food. In one study at Johns Hopkins University, women who eat grapefruit daily shed almost 20 pounds on average in only 13 weeks, without changing anything else in their diet or lifestyle.

Tomatoes: Packed with vitamin C and the phytochemical lycopene, tomatoes stimulate the production of the amino acid known as carnitine. Research has shown carnitine helps speed the body’s fat-burning capacity by one third.

How to Benefit:

It’s easy to reap the weight loss rewards of these fruits. Use full-fat coconut milk and oil in curries, smoothies, or baking.  Enjoy a grapefruit for breakfast or as a snack instead of something sweet. Make your own fresh salsa or add tomatoes to soups, stews, salads, or curries. Make fresh guacamole with minced onion, garlic, lemon juice, and chopped tomato and cilantro.

Super Health Bonus:

Not only will these fruits help with weight loss, they have plenty of other health benefits too. Avocado helps prevent heart disease. Coconuts help prevent cancer. Grapefruit gives the liver a boost. Lycopene is a powerful antioxidant that studies show cuts the risk of heart disease by 29 percent. http://www.care2.com/

Ever Wondered How Minerals Help Your Body?


http://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/dd/2a/52/dd2a52eafcb4c6c4dec986a41a5be200.jpg

Posted by Carrie Andric – Ever wondered what minerals are for? or how they help our body? Well here’s a handy chart that you can share, print and use as a reference list #weightloss #Weightlosstips #minerals

Is Your Green Smoothie Even Healthy?


https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/57/40/21/57402118e236a31cdada6e6be5b43ff5.jpg

Posted by Justyce Allison – How to make a healthy/super healthy/boosty smoothie

Wake, smoothie, move, repeat. Wake, smoothie, move, repeat.

Green juices or smoothies have become part of everyday vernacular, almost as ubiquitous as a daily caffeine hit, among the health conscious anyway. But despite nutritious smoothies being a buzzword for years now (green smoothie is one of the biggest “trending” words in 2015), its widespread fame hasn’t changed the fact it’s rare for daily greens to be well executed.

And, here’s the clincher, because of this, it actually has little or none of the desired effects on your health and energy.

GREEN BENEFITS

It’s touted as your daily equaliser, an input of nutrient dense and enzyme-rich liquid that can help make you feel great and perhaps help you look it too. It has the potential to deliver easily accessible nutrition to your system and can help you detoxify. If your health is in “credit”, then a green smoothie/juice can further create a bit of a buffer to nutritional and life stresses.

While the idea of grabbing a pre-mixed or pre-powdered greens together with a new, trendy milk or “mylk”, appears to be an efficient way of throwing in the good stuff while getting optimum benefits, the truth is it probably isn’t. There are improvements to be made, and lots of them.

GREEN SMOOTHIE MISTAKES

1. Using pre-mixed, pre-powdered greens and berries

There are an abundance of these fruits and vegetables in their fresh and whole form, with all their intact enzymes and catalysts at your local growers market. A minimal amount of dead, dried, pesticide and chemical farmed green powder is not of any benefit to anyone. Always go fresh when you can.

2. Using low-grade protein powder

Putting awesome fresh produce in your shake and then degrading it by adding a low-grade protein source is not the best way to go.

You’re potentially adding a whole bunch of hidden fillers, inflammatory agents or chemicals to what is supposed to be our remedy against these things! Look out for ingredients like colourings, preservatives and a list of inactive ingredients longer than the active ingredients.

3. Check your superfood blend

Adding superfood blends that only contain micro-doses of the superfoods that you were after is commonplace. Have you considered how much you are going to actually need of that exotic sounding “superfood”?

Some brands contain only contain one tenth or one hundredth of the star ingredient they are promoting, which will do little for your health, even though they are listed on the label and are a selling point for the product.

4. What’s your pre-made blend made of?

Using pre-made blends that have added ingredients for texture, consistency and shelf life need to be scrutinised closely.

Ingredients to avoid are inactive ingredients – they’re inactive because they haven’t been added for use in the nutritional content of the product, but are still put in the product, which means your body still has to process and deal with it.

While some natural sweeteners are OK, again without sourcing them yourself you have little control over their quality. Other sweeteners are flat out terrible for your system – high fructose corn syrup and maltodextrin are the big ones to look out for so avoid these at all costs.

GREEN SMOOTHIES COME GOOD

The main point is, we need to start questioning all ingredients. It doesn’t help anyone if the “healthy” ingredients are produced in an unhealthy way, with unhealthy fillers. The benefits and assurance of using some home ingredients like a quality honey, or some well sourced stevia are more beneficial and harmonious to your body.

The other thing to look out for is food derived from a wholefood.

Most of the beneficial elements, such as vitamins and minerals, found in wholefoods are only used by the body when consumed with the rest of the wholefood. A wholefood contains the needed catalysts and enzymes to help you break down and make use of the nutrients you need to get out of those healthy foods. Nature has already got a great system set up for us and unfortunately separating and prepackaging parts of the wholefood, or synthetically trying to recreate elements of it doesn’t necessarily work.

Yes, it’s a smoothie ingredient minefield out there!

HOW TO MAKE THE BEST GREEN SMOOTHIE POSSIBLE

1. Buy fresh, quality produce

Preferably from local markets or growers. This way you know (because you can ask) where your fruit and veg has been, how long it has (or hasn’t) been in storage and what sort of conditions it has been grown in. Go chemical-free, organic, and sustainably grown produce. Buy lots of it and buy variety.

We recommend a variety of colours and particular qualities (for example, avocado for fat, banana for potassium, etc). Mix it up, too; the number of documented benefits to a wide variety of fruit and veg is only made to look dull by the potentials, uses and benefits we haven’t discovered yet.

2. Pick a suspension fluid

All of the produce will be blended into oblivion so you’ll need something liquid to carry them for texture and enjoyment’s sake (even if you are about your hardcore health there’s nothing wrong with having a health dense and tasty smoothie). Try home-made nut milks, hemp milk or coconut water.

3. Pick the right protein

If you are going to add a protein source, or a powder, do your research. Know your products. Do they use proprietary blends? Then guess what – it’s impossible to know what the hidden ingredients are. Are they transparent with the sourcing of their ingredients? If not, why not? Are they traceable sources? There are companies out there making the effort to nail these crucial factors in the products they deliver. It’s worth finding them and using them.

4. Get yourself an easy to clean, simple blender

You will make the money back on the cash you don’t spend on pre-packed, potentially low quality juices, and you will hit more variety and therefore more nutrition!

Red Hippo, run by Nick Dawe and Mitch and Ryan Barraclough, is an Australian company that provides synergistic protein blends, supported by science, and road tested by Olympians.

Clean Eating Snacks


https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/7f/04/8b/7f048b699f9606625862f22a1084d341.jpg

Posted by Booklady – Top-Rated Recipes with nutritional data and Weight Watchers points!! #cleaneating #snacks | Food and Eat #WeightLoss #WeightLossTips